Emotion Awareness in Design-Based Learning

This Research Full Paper presents a case study where university students (N=13) use a paper diary called EmoForm to self-track their emotions over a ten-week-long design-based learning course. Design-Based Learning (DBL) is a learning approach that enables students to learn through a sequence of design activities in a project-based learning or problem-based learning environment. Student’s emotions are known to play an essential role in learning settings. We argue that students engaging in DBL will benefit from self-tracking of emotions. Such self-tracking will enable students to identify and control their emotions during the DBL process. The results of this study confirm that self-tracking with EmoForm enabled students’ emotion awareness in DBL. In particular, our results illustrate how self-tracking with EmoForm impacted on students’ DBL from three major aspects. We discuss design challenges regarding tools to support emotion awareness in DBL, and we present a summary of strategies conducive towards emotion awareness in DBL and the implications for future research.